


Teach Me to Hear in Silence (As Hearts Do)

by little_blue_ducky



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Development, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Pining, kind of?, watch the boys grow while together and apart
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-05
Updated: 2019-01-05
Packaged: 2019-10-04 17:28:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17308808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/little_blue_ducky/pseuds/little_blue_ducky
Summary: They end up in a field.Filled with nothing else but fucking daisies.At nearly four in the morning.“Goddamn, Hazza,” says Louis emphatically as he steps out from the car. “This has got to be the worst bloody birthday present ever.”in which the boys have a little difficulty saying,i love youand life tries to keep them apart.





	Teach Me to Hear in Silence (As Hearts Do)

**Author's Note:**

> Wherein Harry and Louis grow and love and basically have the worst possible timing throughout their lives.
> 
> Warnings for some swearing (blame Louis), two ridiculously dumb boys who are head-over-heels in love with each other, and mostly just content that was written in the spur of the moment at 3 a.m.

_December, 2010_

Perhaps it’s the frenzied screaming of teen-and-younger-aged girls outside his house that gives away the surprise. With a long-suffering sigh, Louis reverts back to an upright position on the bed and pads over to the window to see which bloody idiot has arrived to torment his waking hours.

Except he sort of already knows: there’s only one idiot on the face of the planet who would happen to show up completely unannounced in Donny on Christmas Eve.

Despite the beanie that makes a solid attempt at covering it up, the mess of curls escaping from beneath its brim instantly confirms Louis’s suspicions. As he watches none other than _the_ Harry Styles approach his front door, sauntering through the yard with occasional smiles flashed to the girls trying to tear past his security detail, Louis remembers to plant an exasperated scowl onto his mouth.

He waits until Lottie calls his name for the third time before he hollers back a “Coming!” and leaves the secluded comfort of his room.

“…so happy to have you here again, Harry,” his sister’s saying. “Louis’s been an even bigger twat since losing than he is normally, which is kind of impressive, I’ve got to admit — ”

Sidling up beside her, Louis pinches her arm extra forcefully, causing her to yelp. “That is absolute slander,” he declares with folded arms, barely sparing Harry a glance. “I don’t know how you expect me to simply stand by while you spread these outrageous lies about me to the misinformed public.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that. I’ve only known you for a few weeks and I’d believe your sister.” Harry’s voice sounds deeper than he remembers — how deep can a sixteen-year-old’s voice get, anyways? Louis wants to reach forward and smack the stupidly self-satisfied smirk off his face. “Hi, Lou.”

“Harry?” he exclaims in a ridiculously shrill voice, as if the very presence of the budding popstar in his house offends him. “Harry _Styles_? Harry _Edward_ Styles? Harry Edward Styles in _my_ house? No, it can’t be — ”

The corner of Harry’s mouth quirks upward. “Oh, c’mere, you tosser,” he says, his tone straddling the border between fondness and irritation, and steps forward with outstretched arms. Any semblance of rational thought vanishes from Louis’s mind — not that there existed much to begin with, let’s be honest — and his arms automatically untangle from his chest to wrap tightly around Harry’s shoulders like a child hugging a life-size teddy bear for protection against an onslaught of night terrors. His breath tickles the shell of Louis’s ear as he murmurs, “Happy birthday,” as though it’s an intimate secret that the rest of the world may never know.

Louis finds that he rather likes the thought of that, being in cahoots with clean-scented, oversized teddy bears such as Harry Styles. “I suppose you can stay,” he announces aloud once he and Harry are separate beings once more.

Lottie snorts, forcing him to turn his gaze to her. “Please. Mum would have your head on a silver plate if she found out you kicked out her favourite person in the world.”

“How dare you. I can’t believe you think there’s any possibility that I’m not her favourite person,” objects Louis loudly, ignoring the rude snickers emanating from his left. Really, young people these days! No manners whatsoever. “Harry, I’m afraid I must steal you away from Charlotte here before she corrupts your brain any more than she already has.”

“Don’t worry, Louis,” says Harry, clearly fighting to keep the grin off his face, “you’ll always be my favourite person.”

Someone must’ve suddenly turned the heater up a few degrees. Louis clears his throat so that his voice doesn’t come out unsteady and entirely humiliating. “Right. Well. Jolly good. At this rate, I might even let you stay for supper,” he informs Harry, who somehow resists the urge to immediately jump for joy.

Lottie rolls her eyes, but stays silent while he leads Harry away from her corruptive influence, closing the bedroom door behind them with a _snick_.

Abruptly, the room feels too confining for the two of them. He’s never noticed how small his bedroom truly is until he’s stuck here alone with a certain curly-haired teen idol.

Without so much as seeking permission, Harry navigates through the labyrinth of strewn clothes around the carpet and finds solace on the island of Louis’s bed, tucking his socked feet under himself and looking perfectly at home. Louis wonders if he should find this rude and presumptuous, but he decides to let it slide just this once, if only because of how comfortable Harry appears on Louis’s bed and his excellent skills as a host.

Through the crack in his window, the occasional scream can be heard from downstairs. The fans seem to be evenly alternating between “HARRY!” and “LOUIS!”, which he appreciates — equality and all that.

“Brought some friends, I see,” he remarks, leaning a shoulder ever-so-casually against the wall. After a thought, he slides one hand into his jeans pocket, leaving his thumb exposed. There. The very picture of indifference.

Harry winces. “Sorry, I accidentally tweeted a selfie when I arrived. Forgot, you know, the whole popularity thing after being home for a bit. They’re quite quick, our fans. It’s impressive, actually.”

“Ah, young Harold.” Louis slides from the wall and sinks onto the mattress, shaking his head slowly. “You should probably shave off your hair if you don’t want to be followed. I’m pretty sure eighty-five percent of your popularity comes from your curls alone.”

“Only eighty-five?” teases Harry, before furrowing his brows in deep contemplation. “But I could never, on a good conscience. You’d miss the curls way too much.”

Louis concedes the point, albeit with a disgruntled huff. He would be a bit devastated, it’s true. What else would his hands play with when he gets bored? To demonstrate the truth of the point, he hooks a finger around a lock of Harry’s hair that has successfully escaped the confines of the beanie and tugs at it.

Silence wraps around them like a heavy blanket on a winter’s night. Judging by the smile that spreads lazily across Harry’s face, he doesn’t mind it either.

“Happy birthday, Louis,” he says.

“You’ve already said that,” reminds Louis. “And texted that. And tweeted.”

“Guess I’m not very creative.”

“You really didn’t have to come all the way up to Donny just to wish me a happy birthday.” None of the other lads did, unless they’re planning to surprise him just in time for dinner.

Harry gives a loose shrug, suddenly finding the bedsheets to be of significant interest. “I couldn’t have missed your very first birthday. What kind of friend do you take me for?”

“You do realise that I’m not a one-year-old toddler.” Despite Harry’s gross underestimate of his age, a tingling sensation arises in Louis’s stomach. Probably the lobster he ate the other day. It did smell funny, come to think of it.

“Still, you did force your way in here without even an invitation,” he points out. “But since I’m feeling generous today, I’ll accept your apology in the form of a present.”

“Well, this is awkward,” says Harry in his careful drawl, blinking innocent wide eyes at Louis. “I was under the impression that my being here would be enough.”

Louis arches an eyebrow. “Getting a tad cocky, are we?”

Grinning too brightly for Louis to muster disappointment at the lack of a present, Harry taps him lightly on the nose. “Patience. Good things come to those who wait.”

“It had better be bloody good,” grumbles Louis. After another poke from Harry, this time on his right cheek, he catches Harry’s wrist in his hand and shoves him to the bed, furiously attacking him with tickles while the other boy shrieks in a mixture of terror and uncontrollable laughter.

Twenty-something minutes later, Lottie finds them sprawled on the floor, struggling to catch breath and wild-haired like they’ve both just run full marathons. (Or engaged in another form of strenuous physical activity, but Louis tries not to think about that.)

* * *

It’s at an ungodly hour of the night that Louis finds himself roughly shaken awake.

His first instinct is to release a groan, cover his face with his pillow, and go immediately back to sleep, but the hands grasping his shoulders are insistent.

“Nnrgh,” he complains into the pillow.

The hands pause, momentarily allowing him some peace. A couple heartbeats later, a warm breath ghosts his cheek. “Louis, come on. Don’t you want to see what your present is?”

“The only present I need,” mumbles Louis groggily, “is some sleep.”

“ _Lewis_.”

“Fine, fine.” Wiping at his eyes with the base of his palm, he sits upright. It takes several blinks before his eyes focus enough to distinguish Harry’s shape in the darkened room. “I’m up, bloody hell. What do you want?”

In the faint beams of moonlight that spill through Louis’s window, he sees the glimmer of Harry’s teeth as he breaks into an eager smile. It’s just endearing enough that he doesn’t shove Harry off the bed and slip back under the covers. “Follow me.”

“I’ll have you know, you’ve just gained an archenemy for life,” Louis tells him, even as he slides his bare feet to the floor. “You’d better watch your food next time, Styles.”

Seemingly undisturbed by the declaration of war, Harry simply tugs him to his feet in response. But his hand doesn’t let go of Louis’s, and after they clamber into the car parked in front of the house, Harry turns the ignition on with one hand while the other finds its way back to Louis’s.

His fingers offer Louis’s a reassuring squeeze as if to say, _I’m here. I’m here, and everything’s going to be alright_.

In his barely conscious state, despite the muted pangs from their too-recent loss that remain as leaden weights in his gut, Louis thinks he might even believe him.

* * *

They end up in a field.

Filled with nothing else but fucking daisies.

At nearly four in the morning.

“Goddamn, Hazza,” says Louis emphatically as he steps out from the car. “This has got to be the worst bloody birthday present ever.”

The only thing keeping him awake right now is the concentric circles that Harry’s thumb continuously rubs into the back of his hand. Because it’s cold, Louis reasons. Harry’s probably just trying to keep Louis from getting frostbite. A real thoughtful bloke, he is.

Without so much as a grunt in acknowledgement, Harry trudges into the field with a six-pack of beer tucked under one arm and a rolled up blanket under the other. Louis has no choice but to trail after him.

“You do know this is where all the kids come to snog, right?”

“What can I say? I’m a real romantic,” fires Harry over his shoulder.

Louis wonders where the romance was in the way he stuck his hands up Jessica Fischer’s shirt back in year eleven. The grass tickled his skin to the point of discomfort, forcing them to interrupt their own snogging session to temporarily put their clothes back on before resuming in the backseat of the beat-up sedan that Mr. Fischer had lent them for their ‘study session’.

Ah, young lust.

It takes roughly an eternity for Harry to find a spot in the field that satisfies his internal criteria, while Louis stands to the side and tries not to fall asleep on his feet. It makes for great entertainment to analyse the diversity of emotions flitting across Harry’s face – frowning one moment only to crinkle his eyes the next.

Eventually, Harry unfurls the picnic blanket and straightens it out over what Louis assumes to be the single most perfect patch of grass he’s ever lain upon. As Louis lies down beside him, he says, “So, where’s my birthday present?”

His fingers busy fiddling with a can of beer, Harry jerks his chin towards the sky. From here, with no skyscrapers or canopies to obstruct the view, the Earth has never looked so round. Louis abruptly feels unspeakably small and insignificant in the scope of the universe; the doubts that have plagued his waking hours and even wandered into his dreams since he came home from losing the X-Factor start to dissipate like dust carried away on the breeze.

“I’m giving you the whole world.” Harry’s voice swells with self-satisfaction, making Louis wonder exactly how long it took him to come up with the idea.

Louis takes a swig of the beer that Harry hands over, tipping his head back to see the constellations. He’s honestly never met anyone more absurd. “Good luck trying to top this next year.”

“Hopefully by then humans will have started to colonise Mars. Then I can go stick a flag there with your face on it.”

“My own planet, huh,” contemplates Louis, tapping a finger to his lips. “Reckon I can live with that.”

Harry muffles an abrupt laugh by clapping both hands onto his mouth, and Louis lowers his chin to shoot him an incredulous stare. “Sorry,” he says, his voice behind cupped hands, and immediately lets out another giggle. Once he’s composed himself, he uncovers his mouth to say, “I was just thinking how cool it would be if you could claim your own sun somewhere.”

Louis eyes him warily. “Please don’t say I could name it ‘Tomlinsun’.”

“I won’t,” promises Harry, and says no more.

Lengthy minutes pass before either of them speaks, unwilling to disrupt the peaceful quiet that has settled over the field. Daisies sway tremulously under the insistence of the night breeze. Unable to resist the impulse, Louis picks a nearby daisy and tucks it above Harry’s ear, where its petals poke out from beneath his unruly curls.

The motion causes Harry to turn to face him, with an unreadable expression widening his eyes. They maintain eye contact for a solid minute, while Louis attempts to smile. It’s a bit hard when your lungs seem to be running out of air. Without a word, Harry leans in, painfully slow, until his breath brushes Louis’s skin.

A voice in the distant crevices of Louis’s head yells at him, but the words (most likely profanities) are distorted and muffled – and they silence entirely once, against all better judgement, Louis begins to shift closer as well.

They meet in the middle, an awkward jostle of teeth and noses at first, before soon gaining common understanding – not unlike the way their friendship developed, beginning with a beat of awkwardness (in the loo, nonetheless) but rapidly spiralling into something great.

Louis doesn’t even realise what he’s doing until his hand reaches up to cradle the side of Harry’s jaw, trying to pull him impossibly closer. Harry tastes of cheap beer and sleep and a sense of simple familiarity, as if they’ve done this before. As if, perhaps in some distant, alternate universe, kissing him means coming home.

Harry nips lightly at his lower lip, causing Louis to release a noise he wasn’t even aware he could make. In response, Harry’s breathing stutters into Louis’s mouth, who draws Harry’s breaths into his own lungs as though unable to breathe otherwise. Subconsciously, he shifts closer and closer, pressing most of his upper body against Harry’s own, the thought of any physical distance between them verging on offensive.

An abrupt splash of coldness shocks Louis instantly out of his fervour. He flinches back, leaving Harry open-mouthed and confused, grasping onto a handful of air. In their haste, they’ve managed to knock over a can of beer, causing it to spill into Louis’s lap, conveniently jarring the moment to a halt before anything further can happen. (Louis ignores the barely discernible flutter in his stomach at the thought of anything further happening.)

He spits out a loud swear and leaps to his feet, wringing the fabric of his pyjamas to squeeze out the liquid even as a dark stain begins to spread. Harry chuckles softly, but when Louis searches his gaze, he finds something heavy and inscrutable.

After another minute of occasional swearing, Louis sits back down to accept the second can of beer that Harry offers. In the thick silence that follows, the voice he silenced at the start of their kiss springs back into existence with a tirade of curses hurled at him.

And it’s right, he realises, sneaking a glance out of the corner of his eye to watch Harry’s lips purse before taking a sip. What _was_ he thinking? It’s only been a few weeks that he’s known the lad, but, perched on a picnic blanket under a canopy of constellations, he discovers that he can’t envision a future that doesn’t involve Harry Styles slotted neatly into it.

So far he’s only survived nineteen years of pure idiocy on this little blue planet, but he suspects with more certainty than he’s ever known that his life, as long as it may last, will always contain a Harry-shaped space even if he has to carve it out by sheer force of will.

If he screws up their friendship over one silly, tipsy kiss that was likely just Harry’s overly affectionate way of wishing him a happy birthday, Louis doesn’t think he would ever be able to forgive himself.

So he drinks until his vision blurs and the giddy excitement in his head numbs, all the while ignoring the weight of the none-too-secret glances that Harry shoots him. Eventually, they lapse back into a comfortable, back-and-forth conversation and Louis would almost forget that the kiss ever happened, if not for the chilly stain on his pyjamas and the way his pulse quickens whenever he meets Harry’s eyes.

And that’s how Louis gets his first kiss from a boy, in the too-early hours of Christmas, surrounded by a chill that nips at any exposed skin and a swirling sense of promise and possibility in the morning air.

His lips tingle with a little residue of promise as he lies above the sheets of his bed and stares at the ceiling, hours after the kiss ends.

**Author's Note:**

> Anyway, thanks and bless you for actually sticking through this chapter. Hope it was at least slightly worth the time spent! Not entirely sure where it's headed, but I guess we'll see where this adventure takes us.
> 
> Title's taken from the final line of the poem, "Sound Has Ears" by manuel arturo abreu, which goes like this: "teaching me to hear in silence as hearts do". When I first read it, I interpreted that line to be about things that are unspoken yet still heard, particularly how the words "I love you" can be said in so many ways that don't require actually speaking, and that's partly how this whole thing started. (The real meaning's actually completely different from how I interpreted that specific line when I first read it, but what the heck, right?)


End file.
